2001 Z28 Project Camaro - Strappin’ In

The importance of safety should never be overlooked, so here’s a great way to stay firmly in the seat of your fourth-gen.

It may sound a bit corny, but to be a good driver you need to become one with the car. After all, you don’t need a lecture from Master Yoda to understand that you can’t concentrate on piloting your car if you’re sliding and flopping around the seats. In the case of our ’01 Z28 project Camaro, Black Betty, the factory seats had some bolstering, and while they were somewhat effective for cruising down a winding mountain road, they came up lacking when attempting any serious driving. The factory seatbelts didn’t help either since they only lock down and hold you in place under braking, and we’re typically accelerating while making turns in this ride.

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So, we decided the way to fix this was to install some more aggressive competition seats along with a four-point harness system. Of course, that presented a new problemfiguring out how to mount the shoulder belts. Putting in a cage was out since Licata has two young sons who dig getting picked up from school in the Camaro (at ages 7 and 10 they already get it, and their peers think it’s a pretty cool ride, too), so we needed something easily removable. Turns out, there is a small company called Gen 4 Racing that recently began manufacturing just what we need. Owner Corey Bedortha developed a removable and height-adjustable harness bar for guys that wanted the flexibility of running bar and race harnesses at the track and the ability to keep the backseat available for daily driving duties. With the harness anchoring system figured out, we hit up Corbeau for a set of their sleek and supportive CR1 seats along with some of their harness belts.

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2001 Z28 Project Camaro - Strappin’ In

25 And with that, this project moved into the “done” category. The new seats look great in the Camaro, and now Licata can concentrate on driving instead of not flailing about during high-speed cornering.

For a 10-year-old car, the interior of Black Betty is in pretty fine shape. The leather drizzled seats are a bit bolstered, but not much. Add in the slippery seating surfaces, and you have a recipe for being tossed about during high-speed maneuvers. Besides, the driver's seat was torn and Licata has an image to maintain.

As you might have guessed, the first step was to remove the old seats. The driver seat is power-operated, so we made sure to unplug the harness first. The new seats are sans power, so we taped off the plug.

When we do these seat stories on old cars we usually find enough money to cover a cheap lunch, but the ’01 only coughed up 55 cents, a gum wrapper, a wayward trim screw, a stale corn nut, and what we think was a piece of candy.

With the seats gone, we went about removing all the front seatbelt anchors, which were secured by torx screws.

We then did a test fit of the brackets and sliders from Corbeau (PN D1068T and D1069T). They attach to the floor using the existing anchor studs, which makes installation much easier.

With the seats out of the way, it was the perfect time to install the adjustable harness bar from Gen 4 Racing. The kit came with all the hardware needed and sells for around $419. The idea is that once installed it’s fairly easy to remove the bar and regain use of the back seat in between track events. Since many fourth-gens still serve as daily drivers, this is huge benefit.

The four anchor points for the harness bar are the rear upper shock mounts and the outside front seatbelt bolts. To access the rear upper shock mounts, we folded back the factory carpet, removed the foam sound deadener, then cut a small slit in the carpet to gain better access.

We then removed the upper shock nut and temporarily installed the harness bar bracket so we could mark the hole that needed to be drilled through the wheelhouse.

With the hole marked, we then removed the bracket and broke out our Craftsman drill. The hole passed through a couple of layers of steel so we made sure to use a sharp bit.

And here’s the view from the interior and from the wheelwell of how it should look when done. We made sure to use the lock washers included in the kit, and as an extra safety measure, we added a second lock nut to the top of the shock stud.

And here’s the view from the interior and from the wheelwell of how it should look when done. We made sure to use the lock washers included in the kit, and as an extra safety measure, we added a second lock nut to the top of the shock stud.

With the bar out of the Camaro and the seat flipped back into place, this is how much of the bracket is visible. We then repeated the procedure on the other side of the car.

With both brackets installed, we could then set the harness bar in place. At this point it sort of reminded us of a roller-coaster safety bar, and given how Licata drives, that’s a fairly appropriate analogy.

Using the new, longer bolt supplied in the kit, we attached the lower brackets to the Camaro. The bracket is sandwiched between the factory shoulder harness, our new racing harness, and the sill of the car.

After both brackets were installed, we then bolted in the adjustable down bars. In addition to providing overall strength to the system, they also allow us to adjust the main harness bar to the right height for proper shoulder harness angle.

After both brackets were installed, we then bolted in the adjustable down bars. In addition to providing overall strength to the system, they also allow us to adjust the main harness bar to the right height for proper shoulder harness angle.

And here’s the Gen 4 Racing harness bar completely installed. As you can see, it’s now unsafe to ride with anyone in the backseat, but removing the bar takes less than five minutes.

With the harness bar installed, we could then move onto the seats. Here’s the new Corbeau CR1 ($399 each) seat next to the factory offering. It’s pretty easy to see how much more aggressive the bolstering is on the Corbeau. They come in a wide array of colors and materials including leather for the high rollers.

We expected the new seats to be lighter than the stockers, but to make sure, we broke out our Longacer car scales. What we found surprised us a bit. The factory seats weighed in at 32 pounds for the passenger seat and 40 pounds for the power driver seat. The new Corbeau seat came in at 28 pounds, but that was without the 11-pound bracket and slider assembly, resulting in a net overall gain to the car of 6 pounds The new seats felt a lot sturdier compared to the stockers, so we forgave the slight weight gain.

The proper order on installing the seats was to bolt the slider/bracket assembly to the seat and then install the whole unit into the car. The brackets run about 90 bucks each and included the sliders. Best of all, they fit, unlike cheaper generic setups we’ve tried in the past.

There’s no point in installing a harness bar if you don’t have a harness system, so we picked up this kit ($149 per seat) from Corbeau when we ordered the seats. This cam-lock system came in a five-point configuration, but for now we’re not going to use the anti-submarine fifth belt. The belts are offered in several colors, but we stuck with black.

When buying belts, make sure they are SFI-certified. After all, you’re betting your life on them. The Corbeau belts were labeled as meeting 16.1 spec. They were also punched as being manufactured in December of 2010. The date is important since belts degrade over time and become weaker. In fact, many sanctioning bodies require that the belts be fairly new, and in some cases no older than two years. You can find out more about harness belt safety at SFI’s website (www.sfifoundation.com) under their articles section.

23 There’s a lot of science involved with harness systems and even good belts can become a liability if installed improperly. The general rule of thumb seems to be that the angle of the harness should fall between 10 degrees below the shoulder to 10 degrees above the shoulder, with level to the shoulder being best. This is why running your harness way down to the rear belt anchors is a bad idea. The sharp angle can cause spinal compression in an accident, and that’s a really bad thing. Also, the harnesses do stretch during an accident and the longer the belt, the more stretching will occur.

To get our belt angle to a more acceptable angle, we adjusted the struts to raise the bar a bit. Once done, we locked them in place.

And with that, this project moved into the “done” category. The new seats look great in the Camaro, and now Licata can concentrate on driving instead of not flailing about during high-speed cornering.

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